Thursday, December 19, 2013

PreK: Learning with Necklace Beads and a Freebie

I spent the morning yesterday organizing my mother's craft cabinets and found these adorable beads!!! I swear my mom should have been a teacher as much as she loves to do crafts and collect just about anything! She can find a use for just about any object you can think of.....which is the reason it took me most of the day organizing for her. Those cabinets would be a teacher's dream!!!!.......it kinda makes me wish I was in the classroom again.....well...just a little.

My daughter loves jewelry so I knew she would love working with these necklace beads.

Here is one activity we did. I created a simple sheet to help her with counting a set of objects.

She would place her set of beads in the blue circle labeled "My Group".

She would them slide her beads over to the "How Many" circle while counting. Usually young children have a hard time with this concept early on because they end up recounting objects or miss counting because they lose track of objects counted and not counted. So I thought this would be a great way to help her see that.

Another activity we did was sorting by color and pattern. I created circles with the colors and pattern schemes that were on the beads and we placed the beads that matched inside.

So she wouldn't be so overwhelmed, I placed just a handful of beads in a separate bowl.

Then of course, we couldn't finish without making a cute little necklace using her 2 favorite colors!

Most of the time, these beads are used for working on pattern recognition and creation, but as you can see, they can be a tool for teaching other math concepts as well that your young child will enjoy!

Hello and welcome! I'm a mother of 2 little kiddos and a 1st grade teacher. I create teaching resources, graphic designs, and do photography as well!! I'm busy to say the least and LOVE every minute of this journey!! Thanks for stopping by!